The issue of how long Nigeria will remain as one nation is becoming more frightening per second. And unfortunately, the present day puppet government with no shoe no direction, isn’t showing enough concern over major fear- provoking national issues.
Now that even the blind from the sockets can see that we are doing everything to fulfill the American forecast, loaded with false prophecies and fatalistic fantasies that a country that has stayed together for fifty suffering and smiling years; with unsuccessfully managed tribal, religious, ethnic and corruption oriented issues would fall apart by the year 2015. The acclaimed world power of our time, USA, choreographs major global events and minor ones too. But what we sometimes fail to realize is that many of her intervention is for the paramount interest of America. At the end no country will matter not even its supposedly close buddies.
Many past and present US ambassadors have expressed many conflicting statements about Nigeria, for instance, in 2009 in a colloquium in Rhode Island University, Princeton Lyman, a former Ambassador to Nigeria said the country was no longer relevant to the USA in the order of events. Conversely, during the dying days of former president, Umaru Yar’adua, same America, labeled Nigeria as the most important partner of the USA in Africa. At that time, former ambassador Johnnie Carson purported that Nigeria was too important a country to be led by someone whose health is puny. Nigeria, you will agree has mastered the act of hearing the worst about itself, therefore the sum total of Ambassador John Campbell’s forecast has scarcely sent enough worry or anxiety.
But to carelessly think or admit that any US envoy will make such seemingly unrehearsed statement is foolhardy. I’m not out rightly saying that the US is masterminding the split of Nigeria. But the US is awfully too strategic a superpower to approve its ambassadors make such unpremeditated statements. Could all of this confusion be a sub strategy to a bigger strategy?
Bloodshed is absolutely unavoidable if an enormously big nation like ours will split, but are we not loosing lives already? Now that we are served with two devils: of either looking for strategic ways to solve our ethnic oriented crises or split up via excessive bloodshed, only to later discover that that wasn’t the issue, shouldn’t we be thinking of which is the lesser devil by now?
Some of the founding fathers of our independence never saw or agreed to the dream of a one Nigeria. ‘So no be today sef” in 1948, northern leader, Abubaka Tafa Balewa said: ‘Since 1914 the British government has been trying to make Nigeria into one county, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs, and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite . . . Nigerian unity is only a British invention’.
Also, Obafemi Awolowo, who dominated Western region politics, wrote: ‘Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no “Nigerians” in the same sense as there are “English”. The word “Nigerian” is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not.’ …Can you imagine!
Now, it might be easier to understand the reasoning behind these words but where this ethnic strives as real as this even at infant Nigeria?
Just as I strongly feel that ethnic and religious differences are responsible for some of our national setback, I also feel that it’s neither insane nor mad but more, to fight war in God’s name. The divine is more than capable of winning his own followers. On whose behalf do limited mortals like ourselves fight for the all powerful? Much more, corruption which is the mother of all is the most prevalent of all of Nigeria’s challenge after all, if we would say the truth all tribes, languages and religions are well represented in the class of rich corrupt charlatans. Therefore fighting corruption is the main thing! It would be a colossal waste when we kill ourselves for all the wrong ethnic and religious reasons in the world, only to divide into south and north Nigeria and yet be governed by these same corrupt leaders.
I don’t know who is deceiving us that breaking up into north and south Nigeria like Sudan did would solve our corruption ‘wahala’. For where!? Considering a country with six geopolitical complex zones, and over 350 absolutely different languages, if we must break-up, we would need to break into more than pieces.
The challenge in my opinion isn’t all that a religious, ethnic, or tribal thing like many of our corrupt leaders wants us to see it. It’s more of a class interval barrier, the long difference between the so called ‘haves’ and have more, and the hopeless ‘don’t haves’.
We always erroneously feel that our size is the major problem. If population isn’t India and china’s problem then we had better find productive use of all of our critical human capital and fertile but long lasting fallowing lands. May I suggest that we take lessons from the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia? These two countries collapsed partly because they had size they couldn’t manage.Ours too is a management deficiency. A country that can’t manage its people will need more than a miracle that raises the dead to manage its resources. If you ask me I will rather say oil resource is also our problem. Nigeria needs to diversify her oil economy which in every way has become a course to the nation. The use of oil resources for economic wealth has rendered the mind of many regimes excessively impotent. Plato said “whatsoever is cherished in a country will be cultivated there”. If we really claim to cherish our crude oil, how come we are yet to lunch a sound refinery?
It also worth noting that we all are a part of all this mess, including some of the nationalist a few of us are ever willing to die for despite that they are dead and decayed already. The elite use to think that it was all about going to school, get good grades, more professional certification, get a good job, then drive great cars on roads with big pot holes big enough to make soup for all.
I strongly advocate that for our collective good, we should ensure that our diversities in regions, ethnicity, and religion be viewed as attributes which services our common national interests in mutually beneficial ways. Nigeria is a pluralistic society and that is a positive thing which we must emphasize instead of the manageable differences emphasized and exaggerated at all times.
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